Elitist Household Cleaning Products

Becoming a wine snob, or a foodie, is a slippery slope. Once you get a taste of the good life, you never want to go back. For the snobbish of us out there that simply can’t have anything less than the best, I’m rolling out a new line of products designed to appeal to their finer tastes: Elitist household cleaning products.

To appeal to the nose-upturned crowd, all you need to do is produce a commodity product and create the perception that it’s very trendy. Once that’s established, commence with unfathomable mark-ups.

To capitalize on this law of nature, I produced a cleaning solution called “pQleunoit”, which is pronounced “Clen-Wah” (the “p” is silent.) You may find the name a bit unwieldy, but an elitist product must have a name only those in the know can pronounce.

pQluenoit was nothing more than water, food dye, and a little ammonia. However, I knew my money should not be spent on the product, but on its marketing. I thus commissioned a design firm from New York to produce artsy-fartsy labels for the bottle, which were created by obscure artists (byproducts of my wife’s fourth grade art class). I then gave the solution an elitist color: ochre. The snobbish will not bite on a color used in the everyday vernacular. Sorry, but if you don’t know what ochre is, then you just don’t belong.

Finally, it was time for the product launch, which I disguised as a wine-tasting party. I invited only the coolest, wealthiest most beautiful people. After an hour of cabernets and stimulating conversation, I broke out the mops. “Anyone here care to try some pQleunoit?” I inquired.

Much scoffing and tsking ensued. However, once I exposed the sophisticated label, and mentioned the solution was ochre with a bouquet of citrus, honeydew, and lavender breeze, interest was piqued.

I poured the cleaner into a glass, and held it up to the light. “Note the body, the lush ochre-ish-ness.” I gave it a whiff, let it breathe, then dumped it into a mop bucket filled with Evian.

In no time, the elite were pushing mops and breathing in the aroma. “I’m catching hints of hazelnut, thyme, and rosewood,” I said, and my guests eagerly agreed.

I also told them that because pQleunoit was naturally derived, it would never deplete fine building materials. “That’s good, because our slate bathroom floor just won’t tolerate anything you’d find at a conventional store,” a pompous ass replied.

A Tale of Two Cellars

By the end of evening, I’d sold several cases of pQleunoit. In fact, business started booming, and soon I was not only selling the product, but I’d contracted with construction teams to build “cleaning supply cellars” right next to the elite’s “wine cellars.”

Everything was just ducky until one of the snobs held a dinner party. After drinking way too much wine, the owner headed to the cellar to snatch another bottle of Chardonnay. The damn fool mistakenly pilfered a bottle of pQleunoit from the cleaning products cellar instead of the wine cellar.

Two hours later, the beautiful people were retching and groaning. It would have been a more gruesome experience if their vomit hadn’t been infused with pQleunoit’s heavenly aroma.

Unfortunately, there were a few lawyers among the retching wretched, and by the end of the following week I’d been sued for every penny in my offshore bank accounts. pQleunoit was finished.

All is not lost for this elitist entrepreneur, however. I managed to hide a few shekels under my mattress, and I’m regrouping. “pQleunoit Vacuum Cleaner Bags”, made from impervious teak wood fiber, will hit the market sometime next month.